Mawahb 5 Expo…

A tiresome week had gone and I'm still following up with its consequences - as usual, sleep deprivation. I can call it a successful week with all the positive feedback we received for our booth in the latest Mawahb 5 Expo; and my own panoramas specifically got large base of attention, starting with the Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Sheik Mohammed Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah.

Explaining Ludendorffs Wirklichkeit to the minister, and on the far right appears the Kuwaiti actor Abdul-Rahman Al-Aqil. Frankly, didn't know he's there until I got this image from friends!

It was a funny chat, and I didn't know he is a photographer too! Turned out that he is a Nikonian, while I'm a Canonese! He started the chat with a statement:

I saw your photo and I wanted to see this man in person, now I see you're wearing a Canon around your neck, you made me sad. 

Oh well, it was the usual strife between Nikons and Canons! At least I did a job that people kept, keep and probably will keep talking about! Up till that moment, I really didn't know he is a photographer as well. It was a pleasant encounter and the beginning of a robust engine. The only thing that kept me annoyed in the duration of the expo is the quality of the prints we've made, and they are supposed to be printed at the #1 print shop here. In one of my discussions with the people working in that print shop, I've realized that the term "calibration" never crossed the dictionaries of those people, yet.

Quick glance at our booth

In this expo, I didn't run around doing a documentation for the whole place as I did 3 years ago. But simply dedicated my efforts for the stage (and man, what an awful legs' pain it was). I didn't have a good lens with low f-value (wide aperture), but the maximum zoom I could do was with my Sigma 70-300mm, and adding a teleconverter (x2) to double the focal length was another definition for "Disaster!" And because the dark atmosphere, there was no escape but to raise the ISO somewhere in between 1600 to 2500. Most of the shots were taken in ISO2000 in fact. Viewing these photos in small size (and after processing) seems fine, but sure not for printing on a large scale.
Taking shots at this events and specifically from the stage is something somehow important for me personally. This is because I'm not a portraiture fan at all, and while a photographer must expand his horizon to other fields other than his, I find it hard to work with portraiture, mainly because of some introversion traits. Thus, the stage is a suitable environment for someone like me to work on capturing gestures and emotions without having to deal in person with the subject. Needless to say, I don't have to plan anything related to the lighting of the scene; it is just all there waiting to be captured.
Well, the work is not over yet with these photos but I will leave you now with a show of some of them which are processed so far, in hope that you'll like them. Keep in mind that the light conditions beside the lens' conditions were NOT to be appreciated! Sorry for the low quality of the slideshow though; this is the only way I got to upload it here!
Note: Music is Soulmates by Lee Rosevere, and can be downloaded for free from freemusicarchive.

  

Inert...

Another week is passing here with a dormant activity on almost all levels of my life. I'm not sure what is it really, it is just that deep feeling of tiring mind and body. Despite my trial to do some photography but I failed with an honorary degree. Maybe I will talk about that later.
My niece is out of the hospital now. According to the doctors, it seems that she was inflicted with the herpes virus, and probably her teeth are suspected for such low immunity (adding the effects of thalassemia) to the virus and enabling the virus to the reach the circulatory system that easily and up to the brain. Thank God she is fine by now, even though with a dozen of medicines and antibiotics. Just to imagine such a little girl is suffering all of that at such an age makes me hate my life already.

Well, let's see what I've done in the past 2 weeks, if there is anything that I could have done better anyway...

Astro

After getting my Rokinon mirror lens, I didn't have much chances in the past weeks to try it well, but I did enough to see its effect on lunar and solar photography. The solar part, in particular, was a cumbersome experiment which I will talk about in a while.

100% Crop
Rokinon mirror lens (800mm) + 2 x2 teleconverters, f/32, 100^-1sec, ISO800.

The first real trial for the lens was directed to the moon. since I got the lens, the moon persisted on not showing up in the sky; if it is there then it's cloudy, or simply the setting time is prior to sunset itself. Anyway, let's not blabber about the "good" luck I've been experimenting this lately. I've finally captured the moon here and it's shaky as you can see above because of the great focal length (3200mm in total), and the wind was persisting that night. The crop above is a portion of the image which is not resized.

Sonne IX
Rokinon mirror lens (800mm) + 2 x2 teleconverters, f/32, 8000^-1sec, ISO100.

The next test was aimed, of course, towards the sun. In fact, the sun was the main inspiration to get such a lens after all! However, you might have noticed that the ISO was relatively high in the moon's shot and it is low in the sun's shot, naturally because of the light level difference between the two. Ironically though, the sun's shot, to me, was harder to achieve for a number of reasons:

• Sun's position in the sky which forced me almost to raise the camera at 90^o.
• Facing the sun and not being able to cover the camera with

LensCoat as I did with previous shots. The LensCoat is useful to cover my head as well while working with the camera's LCD, giving me shelter against the harsh sunlight. The diameter of the mirror lens and the fact that the camera was placed on Manfrotto telephoto lens support made it impossible to cover the system with LensCoat.

Cokin's adapter ring (105mm) is bent (!) and could loosely attach to the front of the mirror lens.

Focusing with the green welding glass proved cumbersome (it doesn't give a sharp focus after all) thus I had to try placing ND gel filters sheets in front of the lens (as Cokin's square ND filters are smaller than the diameter of the lens). This highly affected the quality of the light and increased the cumbersomeness of the movement of the camera and lens (specially with some wind blowing).

Despite the stack of ND gel filters, I still had to use the fastest shutter speed (8000^-1sec)  for my camera and still it would be somehow a bright image.

Source: B&H

I've used around 11-stop of ND filters in my sun shot. Surprisingly, the shot became desaturated. The blue color of Sonne IX might be typical for images processed from IR shots done before (by swapping channels) but in this instance all I had to do is increase the vibrance (and no channel swapping is involved). In the first instance the image was almost greyscale in appearance. I was thinking for some time about using the gel filters for general long exposure shots with other lenses instead of the Cokin square ND filters because staking Cokin's would yield a magenta tint to the image, and here with gel filters it did give an unexpected result. However, desaturation is way better than a magenta tint, from my perspective at least.
The cumbersome situation with the filters made me rethink about the so-called Rear Filters which are supposedly fitting for T-mount lenses like this mirror lens. On the other hand, there is some hope in developing some way to fit gel filters easily into such a system by placing the filters on the rear end of the teleconverters instead of the rear of the mirror lens. However, this needs some revision as the structure of the teleconverter's rear is tricky a bit. Also one of the things that I need to work with is to innovate some way to focus this lens without touching intimately to reduce the shape as much as possible. For the time being, I might be using some rubber bands and clips!

100% Crop of the sunspot.

Now back to Sonne IX which surprised me with the existence of two sunspots (each spot is composed in a pair of poles in fact, meaning they appear as 4 dots). On the smaller version, the focus sounded fine, but of course as we approach in to view the 100% or the real size of the image we can see that the focus is not sharp enough. That's good enough though. Previously, using my Sigma and two x2 teleconverters (yielding 1200mm), the sun would appear as one big disk in the frame. Now, however, using a mirror lens with the same teleconverters, a quarter of the sun fills the frame, giving a good zooming in for the sunspots at hand. The crop you see here is for the sunspot at 5 o'clock in Sonne IX above.

Nox

I've been trying hard in the past 2 weeks to push it further with my night photography. However, the exhaustion and the lack of interest in most of the locations available made me almost idle. Now, in the coming few days, I have to work as much as possible and as fast as possible because winter is vanishing, though slowly. After all, I've somehow succeeded in only one shot which took me some time around 45 minutes to do.

Ad Borea
Rokinon 8mm fisheye, f/8, ISO100.

The location is an old one in fact. I've previously took a shot in this location, with the same lens, and also in one winter night. The difference here is the shot was taken under the roof of the structure (gazebo?) rather than away from it. Also, Ad Borea is in fact a tone-mapped image from a HDR slide. The sequence of the shots was started at 16 minutes exposure and ending at 30 seconds, which one stop difference between successive shots.
One of the embarrassing moments is to discover, after returning back home and uploading the images to the PC, that there was some trash on the left side that the darkness made it hard to see back then. I had to spend some significant time trying to manipulate the image (after tone-mapping) just to remove the trash from the scene. At the end, the only plausible solution I had in mind is to copy the table from the right side and fit it on the left!
Now this location can be inspiring for some panorama work but I need to check my options first in that location.

Failure

I had some ideas sketched down on pieces of paper. Unfortunately for me, all of them do involve some portraiture work. Since I don't have a model, I have to try it all on myself. Of course, this is not an easy task, to be a model and a photographer for yourself in the same time (in fact it is never advised to be so). My room is in clutter; with all the gear splashing in the place. I've tried for several days to catch a decent portrait, but my trials were to no avail on both fronts; posing and lighting. Guess my face is simply not photogenic and doesn't encourage on more creativity with the light! I've decided for the time being to just abandon these ideas and keep on going with something else. Portraiture is a nightmare.

Finale

With the lack of books in the current time, I'm trying to spend time (specifically at work) reading off Wikipedia, which is not a good source of information but it would do the job for general knowledge I'd say.
On the group's front, we are now in the phase of sorting out images to enroll in Austria's international photography contest and I've been given the responsibilities of uploading the photos as in the last year. Not sure how much I will get involved with the group for the time being, but surely I have to be careful in this field. Otherwise, I would slip into a twirl of responsibilities loads beside caring for Mom and the house, and my own projects with my camera and other things (Geltani specifically). Sometimes, I do think that I don't need a vacation from home and work only, but even away from my own camera.

My work is passing through some upheaval in the current time; we don't really know what is going on with the administrative body of the college. Things seem to be in chaos, and more suffering for us, the scientific staff in this place. Day by day, I feel the screws are getting loose on my nerves and I might explode at any moment, with any one. My worries are even extending further on the home front, with some family members being into some hard times (other than my niece).

I have to say that I'm literally losing my faith in everyone around me. I firmly believe that no one out there would really help me with anything, however simple may it be; I have to take things on my own and with my own hands; always. "Don't I deserve some love?" had become a stabilized bell-ringing question in my head at all times.

Drifted...

Well, it was a busy and a quiet week in the same time. Quiet for my camera work (as I tried to stay away a bit from my camera for the sake of working with my Ayvarith project), but it has been busy for driving here and there doing some chores. With chores, comes responsibility, as I received my shipment finally from DHL after being held for around 5 days in customs! Well, might be 4 days...
The final result is that, I had to work with my camera in order to test my new Vivitar x2 teleconverter (2XMC7), which doubles the focal length of your lens. Hence, I worked less with my Ayvarith project, and to top it all, my daydreaming addiction is drifting me away...

Vivitar Teleconverter for Canon EOS series (2XMC7)

As a test for this new tool, I directly had in mind a shot for the moon, because it is something I did before and I know the capabilities of my lenses with this object. The best image I've created for the moon was done with my Tamron 70-300mm lens. I was lucky now to have the full moon at this time, although I was a bit unlucky on Tuesday when it was exactly a full moon time, because we had some rains and I was not able to go on the roof to shoot. Thus, I had to wait for the next day, Wednesday, to do this.
I was lucky here once again, to have a full moon, that by 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., was not directly above me as it is usually whenever I want to try my luck with it! But instead the moon was above the horizon a bit (and that made me think of another shot for it). As a comparison now, I've combined 2 shots, one with Tamron lens alone at maximum  length (@300mm) and one with Vivitar's teleconverter and Tamron @300mm as well.

Two images taken for the moon at same focal lengths; one without teleconverter (left) and one with it (right). The two images were overlapped and cropped, then size reduced to 16.7% of the original. I had to focus manually here, thus the right image might be a little bit blurred. Blame it on my eyes!

One of the problems here though, is the connection. Vivitar's teleconverter do support AF (autofocus function) but, with Tamron being already slow in AF, expect to have more slow action. Well, with time now with my lenses, I've become sort of less reliant on AF functions, but it is essential after all of course.
After finishing from this shot, some scene captured my eyes specially that the moon is above the horizon and not on zenith (above my head), making a good catch for some composition there. I have to admit though, that the structures in front of me did not really impress me. The houses in a countryside or villages would be more fit for such a scene (to my eyes) rather than the houses of the urban areas here. In case we talk about cities, yes, the moon fits there as well I think to be pictures above NY or LA for example with all these big stuff covering the horizon. However, I was not going to miss this chance anyway and went on trying to "HDR" the scene. But that was not as easy as I thought...

Nox (A Night)

In the beginning, I tested my simple Canon lens of 18-55mm, but I didn't like the portions and ratios even @55mm. The moon was so distant and it won't be easy to show its details here. Thus, I changed to my other Canon lens, 55-200mm. I think I've found the perfect view I want @90mm. But problems are yet to come.
Before attending to this scene and while shooting the moon in its single form in the beginning (for comparison) I was already trying to get a bracketed sequence of (-2,0,2 EV), but that was not easy because the moon moves so fast. The further you zoom away from the moon, the more it looks like a stable object, but in a close up as @600mm or even @300mm, you will notice that an exposure of 30 seconds is enough to blur your shot. I usually shoot for HDR on Av mode (Aperture value priority), where you fix the aperture and the camera takes the rest for the shutter speed fixing. Thus, I had to put the aperture at maximum (i.e. small f-number) to increase the shutter speed reasonably.
Even @90mm though, the moon tends to move faster for the lens. The first bracketed shot at -2,0, and 2, was not enough because they seem to put the moon so bright without any details. Because of this I thought I might combine up to 6 shots for this HDR, and pulled down my EV scale to take another bracketed shot at -62/3, -42/3, -22/3. In case you are asking why I did fix the interval with (2/3) additions, this is mainly to avoid having 2 images with -2 EV, because Photomatix (or any other HDR merging software) will give you a message about this overlap, and probably won't merge (Photomatix gives you the chance to assign the values of EV manually for each image, which is also not an easy task if you ask me). Having some dark images here, I thought I'm ready, but this wasn't the case. Probably the problem could have been resolved with proper training with metering, but with my lack of training about this matter, I really didn't know where it is most proper to meter for the light for such a scene. I think metering for the moon (the brightest object in the scene) would make the rest of the scene dark. However, HDR is there to resolve such problems, presumably.
On PC now. As I started to work with these images to merge them into HDR slide, I figured out that the images are hard to be merged because the moon did indeed change its position significantly even @90mm zooming. I tried the manual ghosting removal provided with Photomatix, but no use as it proved to be worse (giving black spots around the ghosting place). For a moment, I gave up the HDR idea and tried to do something similar to what I did with several tone-mapped images for the sun one day...

Sunset
Several tone-mapped images for the sunset at fixed intervals were combined and blended together automatically by Photoshop, resulting in completely eliminating the sun disk and keeping vivid colors for the sky.

I was hoping for something similar to the image above in the beginning, but no, that did not happen. Finally, I had to resort to one final trick that I didn't want to use really but I had no choice. After merging the first 3 brackets, the result was fine but only the moon disk was so bright with no details. After that I simply layered one of the dark images (with some details of the moon) on top of my tone-mapped slide, and erasing everything, but keeping the moon disk (and blending it with Overlay). The result is what you see above (after some polishing of course) for the intensity of colors. The original image was intense in the reds and yellow, and I had to put it down a bit. One final thing I have to say here about this image and this process, is that the blue-to-red gradient in the sky is not a result of the HDR processing. This gradient was there INDEED in the sky, but the HDR only put on some saturation to it. I had to crop a little bit from the left side with aspect ratio just to remove a shed on the roof of the other house.

Now, beside my Vivitar teleconverter, I got also 3 books that I'm starting to read now (can't wait to post this and head to read one of them now), and a sound trigger from Hiviz. This tool is essential for high speed photography, but unfortunately I couldn't try it so far because I need something called a PC-terminal head to connect it to this circuit and hook it to my flash unit.

PC terminal in Canon EX580 II (the lower circular port).
Source.

Thus, until I find a head to fit this port in the flash, I don't think I'll be able to use it! I have to roam the hardware shops again (did search one already).
A little break to my vow for giving the camera a break (yeah, just a little), I've decided to go on and do some photo shots of myself, but this time with the help of my brother. Some people wanted to see me after the hair cut. Yeah, TJ had a hair cut, can you believe it? The change of the world as we know it. What to expect next? ... TJ is a human being? hmm...
Anyway, with several shots (which my brother screwed up with focusing), I've started to do him several shots, and finally I got to test my Tamron 70-300mm macro lens on his eye.

Stare

First of all, I had to do some of my favorite adjustments to his eye here; like adding pupil lines and brightening the eye little bit and whitening the eyeball (his eye had some hard red lines or veins). After all of that, I've finally converted the whole thing to black and white. Most of the images I've taken for him were converted to black and white in fact because, I find them more expressive that way and put more emphasis on the expressions or the drama that I desire to add to the scene or the look. Here though, despite adding a black and white adjustment layer, I didn't want to leave it like that. I think mainly because the light direction in the first place didn't add much drama to it. To go around it, I thought of adding a "tonality" or a "tint". The tint here was a bluish hue. To my eye, the color fluctuates between silver, gray and light blue. Now depending on your monitor and how you look at it, the pupil can be brighter or darker. Finally, and to give some sharp look, I've used the Liquify tool in Photoshop to pulls the sides of the eye a bit. To my simply experience with the eyes, some eyes give a strong stare when they are sort of half closed and when they are so, usually their sides are pulled little bit, specially the inner side of the eye (closer to the nose). I have to mention at the end that before doing all of these adjustments, there was already a work done to the RAW file originally, specially with Clarity option, to soften the skin and hide some of unwanted features!

With this little tour with my camera, and with me neglecting more of my duties toward my beloved conlang, Ayvarith, I'm trying to force myself to believe I have a beautiful life. Such optimistic trends were never my thing, but trying hard to adjust something, and along with that comes a lot of daydreaming. Hard to resist the temptation here, and hard to settle down. I have what I need, or so I convince myself, I just try to be happy with what I have at hand. As for what I don't have yet.......... ?








 

Mind = Chaos.

Maybe for the lack of people who push me up or encourage me, or simply say something nice (I say lack, I'm not saying there is none), or maybe because my... ego... is too much to bear with, I've been fluctuating over some tests here and there; partially to know myself better, and partially to feel better about myself. This time, I was in fact looking after something called the Raven test. I was informed in the beginning that it is some test related to autistic features, but later with little googling, I've found out it is also another IQ test depending majorly on shapes and patterns (no numbers, no calculations, only drawings). I had to pay a little to get this result! Typical...

Result

---

TJ
Your IQ is: 131Your age adjusted IQ score is 131 and the average score for all test takers is 98.4.
Your Grade ** Gifted **
Anyone with a general IQ this high is considered to be gifted. You have the ability to think critically, conceptualize ideas and form your own conclusions. Your ability to think in patterns and to produce order out of chaos enables you to handle complexities and see logic in everything. Needless to say you are self-aware of your abilities and have the brains for all known occupations. If you think of intelligence as the ability to adapt easily to new situations then you are at the top of the charts.






IQ Chart

IQ Range	Classification
Above 145	Genius or near genius
130-145	Very superior
115-130	Superior
100-115	Above average
85-100	Below average
70-85	Dullness
Below 70	Borderline deficiency

The question is, am I supposed to be happy for the result or concerned? Am I really gifted or my mental power is not what it should be? I hate to draw myself back to this circle after some friends (who know what they are doing) told me already that it's impossible for me to be having Asperger's. In the meantime, my daydreaming doesn't make it any brighter. Frequently switching between dreams and reality makes my brain trip and lose connection; needless to say the feeling of disappointment.... My mind is so scattered that on Tuesday, and after finishing my work, I've left my work place forgetting my camera's battery on its charger in the office and my wallet. I couldn't retrieve them back of course until the next day. I don't think this is a memory loss, but it is simply an effect of a busy mind I'd say. I'm hoping...

Been surfing through some websites trying to figure out what I need for the next phase with my camera here. Books, lens, tools; all on the list, scattered in my mind. One of the "tools" that I'm planning to get is a teleconverter. It is an attachment that expands the focal length for more zooming power supposedly. Combining this with my 70-300mm Tamron, I can probably increase the focal length to 600mm (as the specs say).

Vivitar Teleconverter for Canon EOS
x2 (Source: B&H)

I wonder though if I can connect two of those together to give me a x4 power! I'm sure that such tools won't be a match to the REAL zooming lenses, but for someone like me, who takes pictures for far objects occasionally (like birds), this solution seems fine. Also, I'm trying to find out some suitable "sound trigger", which is a tool widely used in the field of High Speed photography. The idea is to trigger the flash unit and make it work for a very short period of time (lesser than a second) just by a pulse of sound. Still searching through the net, because there are some news that such sound triggering systems don't work with my flash unit (Canon EX580 II). Makes me think of some other ways to achieve the same effect, but no results so far!

On the books list there might be around 3 books that I'd love to read as soon as I can, providing that I finish the book I'm reading now, the playful brain. One difference though is, the playful brain book is majorly read when I'm in the office, at work, while for photography books, I tend to read them whenever possible even at home. This is mainly because I feel they are instant and a must to develop myself with my camera. Yet, I have to make sure that I finish those games on my queue list first!

3 books that I think I must have by now...

Camera, games, books... you can tell what a mess I'm living, but not necessarily enjoying it all the way! All of this mess and I'm rarely looking at my Ayvarith project and creating a website for it. Not only that, but also, out of boredom, and because I didn't try to take any panoramas for some time now (full spherical panoramas that is) I've went on doing a little experimenting with my 3-legged monopod, and done a panorama for my own bathroom! Yes, my bathroom. Why? Don't ask me please. There are shaky images, as the monopod was extended to a higher level than my head and thus, it was hard to keep it stable (it is shaky already even on shorter heights). Total weight of the camera and the VR-head is around 3kg (~6.6 lb). It was an experiment and I'm already having problems with the panorama as I'm typing these words. I've deleted the images already because of the wrong way I did take these images and many HDR merging problems! I might take it again at another time. One of the challenges, however, in this bathroom panorama is, I couldn't decide what White Balance (WB) should I choose. For the time being, I shot it with Tungsten to balance the great yellowish glow from the 2 bulbs in the bathroom, but that made the pinkish walls go yellowish in a dull way, removing all the heat (or should I say, action) from the walls. However, this hopefully can be adjusted later when I tone-map the HDR finalized version (if the stitching problems are resolved). Another challenge was the height, which I had problems with when trying to adjust the tilt of the camera upward or downward, and going for 30 degrees up and down was not a good bet I'd say. Must have done it with 45 degrees up and down or 30 degrees twice in each direction.

I've been shopping now and buying "flood lights" in various colors. Right now I do have a neutral (yellowish), blue, green and red. I like these lights because of their "flowing". I can imagine them as water of light pouring down on the subject. One of the features I like about these lights also is, they don't appear to be intense when ambient light (in my room) is on, but when the room is dark they show bright. Now having the basic RGB colors of flood lights, this inspires me for few more experiments. 

Philips 80W red flood light
(Source)

Beside those lights there are some tools on the side, like light bulb bases and some other things to store these tools because my stuff are scattered all over the floor. I need double my room size (which is already a couple's room) to store everything I need I suppose. Thinking about that even gives me a shiver for the cleaning I'd be needing to do for such a room!
However, one of the tools or kits I got was storage pockets that can be hung on the wall or the door. I'll be using these to store the light bulbs and (some of the) lighting kit. These pockets were wrapped up around some hard paper, almost like a wood in fact, thus I decided to use this in some way. There are two of them, thus I picked one and drilled in the middle of it to make it as a stand for future use when I need to use the light-holders whose bases are in the form of a clip.

The board mounted on my monopod

Close up for the drilled hole with the monopod's bolt going through it

I've had some ideas to take some pictures in the bathroom (nope not a panorama), but this time for a flowing water. Unfortunately, it didn't work alright to post it in this blog still. Hopefully I will work on that in the future. Caution(s) needed here, since I was trying to bring my light (simple) equipment and a wire extension to the bathroom near the basin to light the flowing water. One drop and everything can be bye-bye...

Nevertheless, I've been working on other days on some catches from seashells. Flood lights here played a crucial rule in "pouring" on the color of the shel. Originally, the shell was greenish, and I've fixed it under a neutral flood light (which gives out a yellow beam). The shot was intended for HDR (i.e. bracketed shot, from -2 to 2) and the WB was Tungsten (to neutralize the heat of the color of the light beam). However, with tone-mapping, and even with Tungsten WB, the heat persisted, thus I had two choices here, to keep up the warm look, or to adjust the temperature slider in Photomatix to the maximum left to cool the colors down. I decided to go on both ways (and change some other settings as well to achieve certain look).

Spiral Shell
with Temperature down

Drama Shell
with Temperature slider slightly above zero point
Someone commented on it saying it's like a rolled up chameleon!

These two shots, however, was an aim to perform a focus-stacking, where several shots are taken on different depth of field (DOF) and then combined by layering the shots and blending them together to get a sharp macro shot. I tried it on these shots but the change in DOF was not to be mentioned here. I think this is because the subject here is not elongated along the camera's view, but more like a flat disk (in some way) and lies almost in one plane of view with respect to the camera.
Also this week, I went on trying the peeling effect again, this time on my censer. Actually, the shots were taken around two weeks ago, but I didn't go on doing this until last week.

Peeled Censer

Take it from me: the more regular and geometric the shape is, the harder it is to do the peeling effect. Why? This is mainly related to the eyes and how sharp your viewer is. In an irregular shape, like the seashell done before (below), the irregularity helps on tricking the eye and you won't have much hard time blending (manually) the different layers together, because the mind already perceives such shape as irregular. In more regular shapes like the censer above, things tend to be harder, and more harder with a light source concentrated in some unique direction. You have to blend carefully trying the best you can to eliminate any "errors" that can be obvious to the naked eyes. In the censer here I wasn't so good at blending and I had to do lot of cloning out, and still the image is not so good, to me.

Peeled Shell

I think I will stop playing around with this trend of tricks and try to work more on some expressional photography, where I would make something out of my mind completely to express some thought or emotion, or simply try to be innovative with my lights here. I still have problems though with those light holders!

Video-wise now, well, I'm not a videographer, but always had and still have fun recording from inside my car, and I still have this idea to record a video in Failaka island. However, I'm in the process of converting all those .MOV files into .MPG (NTSC) and delete the original MOV. This also would help me to cut out some portions of the files easily, as I discovered that lot of programs I have do not deal with MOV or got problems reading such files, and of course helps me to save some space. This conversion almost reduces the file size by 50%.

This is my life now; a total chaos. I need someone to organize my time for me, and I don't stop stuffing my mind up with stuff I think I need to do, and still they push more on my time. I'm trying to get back to exercising little bit, not for a diet or anything (I'm still having bad eating habits) but just to train my body on enduring some aggressive conditions, and maybe, just maybe, I would just feel refreshed and out of my mind's troubles. If only I can get rid of the damn traffic jam...